Oh I agree completely, Vanilla was awful compared to where we are now.
But it's just my opinion on what this new reveal might be.

I dident play Vanilla, so i cant say much about that. I started when BC was released and i can say that the game has just become better and better for each expansion so far. Sure there are things in all expansion i havent liked but its still better overall.

Something that has been prevalent in some of the mmos to come out recently are Dynamic Events. Assuming the next expansion will be fighting the burning legion (as many in game sources have seemed to hint at), I could see flare ups of Legion activity that would need to be put down by armies of heroes. Especially if they managed to incorporate it into a large central zone so as to have pvp connotations as well, since many people seem to be missing the old 'world pvp'. Would be fun to go and crush an army of Alliance that just got done being wrecked by a Legion party.

Something that has been prevalent in some of the mmos to come out recently are Dynamic Events. Assuming the next expansion will be fighting the burning legion (as many in game sources have seemed to hint at), I could see flare ups of Legion activity that would need to be put down by armies of heroes. Especially if they managed to incorporate it into a large central zone so as to have pvp connotations as well, since many people seem to be missing the old 'world pvp'. Would be fun to go and crush an army of Alliance that just got done being wrecked by a Legion party.

Until one of these new mmos with dynamic events actually stands in a position to compete with WoW I wouldn't expect them to become too prevalent in WoW itself.

1. level cap to 95
2. updated old race models
3. pet control interface vastly improved. can now select pet abilities to be cast in tandem with player abilities without use of macros, smarter pet ai.
4. profession reorganization. players are allowed three profession choices now.
5. rework of certain talents that are one dimensional. DK pets will be different based on spec, similar to paladin guardians; abomination (blood tank, will aoe taunt everything when summoned and have poison gas aoe to maintain threat, damage taken converted to blood shield for casting dk), frost wyrm (frost, think gargoyle. freezes targeted enemy when summoned, has aoe slow aura.), unholy remains similar. mage mirror images will automatically change their spell school based on current spec. water elemental will be for frost, but elementals will be now given to fire and arcane. shamans will now have elementals to accomdate each totem; fire (dps), earth (tank), air (buffing and utility), water (healing).
6. raiding difficulty reorganization. LFR>normal>heroic>elite. elite will only be available on heroic difficulty, and can only be accessed by triggering something during the fight. ulduar hardmodes 2.0. LFR, normal and heroic difficulties will remain similar to current form.
7. class solo scenarios. similar to warlock green fire, but every class gets a few solo scenarios allowing them to tweak cosmetics about their characters. eye color change with presence for dks, druid form choices, warlock pet gender and name selectors, warrior banner graphic designer, monk celestial spirit themed attacks.

My 7 - It will have something to do with Outlands and the Burning Legion.

Refurbished Outlands - Druids/Shamans have cleansed the evil and fel magics from outlands. The Blood Elves who fought for Kael Thas and Illidan are redeemed, go back to Azeroth and start a crusade against the remaining Scourge in Quel Thalas and Plaguelands. Some Blood Elves stay and build a new city, they leave Shattrath and hand it over to the Draenei. Draenei finish there Azeroth City, the Exodus can no longer fly so they're stranded unless they go through the Blasted Lands portal, etc.

- New Race: High Elves - Similar to Pandaren they're not Faction specific, they side with whoever they want. Starting Zone is Crystal Song Forest and Dalaran, once they decide which side they're on Horde High Elves live in Silvermoon and Alliance live in Stormwind. They gain there own Quarters in the cities.
- Exodus/Silvermoon are finally finished and now are apart of Azeroth instance. Flying mounts are now aloud, etc. The two cities will be home to the new profession trainers.
- Now able to have 3 professions and 1 New Profession - Naturalism - basically pair it up with Herbalism and Alchemy, go around the world cleansing shit for the druids and shamans, especially in outland and plaguelands. Along the way you can unlock neat battle pets, wands and staffs, off hands and chance to collect herbs or some shit. Passive buff - critters come to your aid in combat to assist you and heal you or your allies - CD 2mins.
- New Class - Battle Mage - Basically a spell caster and melee hybrid. Can Equip Sheilds, 1 or 2 handed Sword/Maces/Axes, Staffs. - neither spec will be focused on 1 role, all specs can tank or dps, but certain specs will focus on staff combat, Sheild and 1h combat, etc. For example the Ancient will be similar to a prot warrior or paladin, it will use its sheild for damage, but it wont necessarily have to tank. Wears Spell power plate. Similar to a Mage, 3 specs will be Purger (Holy/Fire spell types), Radical (Holy/Arcane) or Ancient (Arcane/Nature).
- New Sky Zones - Similar to rift, random 'rifts' or sky gates will appear, burning legion will spawn through and you will need to fight them either individually or seperatly. The more people fighting, the more rare mobs will come through that will drop gear, mounts or currencies. Will not be some shitty boring thing to do - can replace dailies, etc.
- Outland will be cleansed, it will become bigger, 58 - 70 leveling will move azeroth (to assist the High Elves and Blood Elven Crusades) as fighting Kael Thas and Illidan is no longer required.

Oh also it wont only be Outland, it will be Sargeras' home world - The Elven Crusader will be invading this place, Illiand will return as a faction (Demon Keepers). Maive and Illidan will make babies after we killed him in TBC (one chilly night on the highest point of Black Temple, Maive came down with a chill, so Illidan snuggled her, then she put out, now they live happy ever after).

In a continued effort to make this game as simple as possible, Blizzard will once again announce ALL NEW talent trees.
-- Only one tier of talents this time, and that means 3 choices: red, blue and yellow. It doesn't matter what you pick, they all do the same thing.

Additionally the continued homogenization of classes will allow for easy balancing.
--Battle Resurrections for everyone.
--More classes will be able to create summoning stones and health stones (Warlocks are overpowered, they don't want to force 10 mans to take a Warlock for more than one reason)
-- Every class will be able to Bloodlust

And finally they will take away features that everyone likes
--Flying (Explore their work dammit, explore)
--BOA gear (they want you to actually play through that content they worked so hard on so many times it hurts)

Features you want to see that will never happen because they want to continue to take your money
--Server merging for low pop realms (in all seriousness this is a BIG IMPORTANT issue for me personally, one that they have to address)
--XRealm for current tier raids (too interested in raking in moneys from server xfers)
//just a side note , its either or in the above 2 points for me, but one of those has to change.

Well i hope that we go back to outland. How it will happen is that they rediscover another continent floating on the other side of outland. And they discover that the legion is massing there to attack the other half of outland to gain control of the dark portal then invade atheroth again. Thats kind of loose and vague and doesnt make much sense because thats not the legion's style, but one can dream.

Considering that this expansion will be released during the 10th anniversary of the game, those selling points are pretty lackluster.

I'm expecting Blizzard to go all out.

-New models that allow us to have tattoos and be sub races.
-New class
-New continent
-2 new professions
-New game feature that will redefine how we play WoW.
-Improved talent system
-4th specs for each class
-New mounts
-Being able to play old raids with revamped graphics and heightened difficulty

Yeah, that's what I'm expecting for WoWs 10th birthday.

I have a lot of faith in Blizzard, but i honestly think expecting ALL of that is too much for an expansion.

My 7 - It will have something to do with Outlands and the Burning Legion.

Refurbished Outlands - Druids/Shamans have cleansed the evil and fel magics from outlands. The Blood Elves who fought for Kael Thas and Illidan are redeemed, go back to Azeroth and start a crusade against the remaining Scourge in Quel Thalas and Plaguelands. Some Blood Elves stay and build a new city, they leave Shattrath and hand it over to the Draenei. Draenei finish there Azeroth City, the Exodus can no longer fly so they're stranded unless they go through the Blasted Lands portal, etc.

- New Race: High Elves - Similar to Pandaren they're not Faction specific, they side with whoever they want. Starting Zone is Crystal Song Forest and Dalaran, once they decide which side they're on Horde High Elves live in Silvermoon and Alliance live in Stormwind. They gain there own Quarters in the cities.
- Exodus/Silvermoon are finally finished and now are apart of Azeroth instance. Flying mounts are now aloud, etc. The two cities will be home to the new profession trainers.
- Now able to have 3 professions and 1 New Profession - Naturalism - basically pair it up with Herbalism and Alchemy, go around the world cleansing shit for the druids and shamans, especially in outland and plaguelands. Along the way you can unlock neat battle pets, wands and staffs, off hands and chance to collect herbs or some shit. Passive buff - critters come to your aid in combat to assist you and heal you or your allies - CD 2mins.
- New Class - Battle Mage - Basically a spell caster and melee hybrid. Can Equip Sheilds, 1 or 2 handed Sword/Maces/Axes, Staffs. - neither spec will be focused on 1 role, all specs can tank or dps, but certain specs will focus on staff combat, Sheild and 1h combat, etc. For example the Ancient will be similar to a prot warrior or paladin, it will use its sheild for damage, but it wont necessarily have to tank. Wears Spell power plate. Similar to a Mage, 3 specs will be Purger (Holy/Fire spell types), Radical (Holy/Arcane) or Ancient (Arcane/Nature).
- New Sky Zones - Similar to rift, random 'rifts' or sky gates will appear, burning legion will spawn through and you will need to fight them either individually or seperatly. The more people fighting, the more rare mobs will come through that will drop gear, mounts or currencies. Will not be some shitty boring thing to do - can replace dailies, etc.
- Outland will be cleansed, it will become bigger, 58 - 70 leveling will move azeroth (to assist the High Elves and Blood Elven Crusades) as fighting Kael Thas and Illidan is no longer required.

Oh also it wont only be Outland, it will be Sargeras' home world - The Elven Crusader will be invading this place, Illiand will return as a faction (Demon Keepers). Maive and Illidan will make babies after we killed him in TBC (one chilly night on the highest point of Black Temple, Maive came down with a chill, so Illidan snuggled her, then she put out, now they live happy ever after).

I think this is an excellent post, very nice.

Some others mention Blizzard further boosting the whole pet battles aspect .. let's not see pets assist you as a player whilst battling though please. Can you imagine, you would be forced into pets, which sounds like a horrible sentence.

1. Level cap to 95
2. Rework of the talent trees, it will be a middle ground between the old system and the current system. More choices than we have now but still restrictive.
3. Some kind of public quest / dynamic quest system á la Warhammer Online Public Quests / Rift Rifts. The resource war in the Barrens in 5.3 is probably the first step towards a system like this.
4. A new race and/or class. No idea what they will pick, but it's not gonna be TEH DEAMON HUNTARD.
5. LFR for oldskool raids. Either in the current form, or scaled / "challenge mode" versions.
6. Integration of Hearthstone into WoW in some way
7. Overhaul of the AH system, most probably a CRZ-style, battlegroup-wide AH.

1. Level cap increase
2. New player models (because of time involved, no new races this expansion)
3. 58-70 leveling range moved to Azeroth (divided over existing zones) to remove a jump back in the timeline.
4. New Outland for level 90+ - revamped parts of old Outland combined with new zones
5. Splitting realms into alliance only and horde only and connecting them via CRZ so things are visually the same but technically it's now easier to merge unbalanced realms and improve faction balance.

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5. rework of certain talents that are one dimensional. DK pets will be different based on spec, similar to paladin guardians; abomination (blood tank, will aoe taunt everything when summoned and have poison gas aoe to maintain threat, damage taken converted to blood shield for casting dk), frost wyrm (frost, think gargoyle. freezes targeted enemy when summoned, has aoe slow aura.), unholy remains similar. mage mirror images will automatically change their spell school based on current spec. water elemental will be for frost, but elementals will be now given to fire and arcane. shamans will now have elementals to accomdate each totem; fire (dps), earth (tank), air (buffing and utility), water (healing).
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